The Recent Fall of Women’s Fertility Intentions in Canada

Benoît Laplante, Institut national de la recherche scientifique
Julie Blouin, Université du Québec à Montréal

Fertility has been decreasing in Canada since the 2008 financial crisis as it had elsewhere. A key question is whether fertility has fallen because people cannot have the children they want, or because they want fewer children. In this paper, we study the change in fertility intentions of Canadian women over the last three decades. We use data from seven cross-sectional surveys conducted between 1990 and 2022. We use a ‘pseudo-biographical’ approach that focuses on the probability of intending to have a specific number of children over the life course conditional on parity and age that allows showing that intentions have a schedule. Results show that intentions have fallen since 2011, but especially since 2017. This fall is aligned with the decline of fertility rates. The decrease is most noticeable among young women, about half of which now begin their reproductive years intending to remain childless. The schedule of intentions varies across educational levels: more educated women form their intentions to have children later. The main driver of the decrease in fertility seems to be the combined effect of decreasing intentions among childless women, and the increasing proportion of childless women in all age groups.

Keywords: Fertility

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